


Beauty lay not in the thing

by middlemarch



Category: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Genre: Baking, Conversations, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gabriel is just as good a husband as you would have expected, Marriage, Post-Canon, Romance, no dumplings were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 03:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20202949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd done far harder things, she told herself that before she began.





	Beauty lay not in the thing

“What have you done, Bathsheba?” Gabriel asked. He sounded worried, sore concerned Liddy would have called it, and Bathsheba shook her head a little. She hadn’t wanted this. Not the furrow in his brow nor the tension evident to her in his lips, the angle of his jaw.

“I’ve made your supper, with my own two hands for once,” she said. She reached one of those hands out to grasp the sturdy wooden slats of a chair. It wouldn’t do to stumble. “There’re dumplings, you like those, and an apple tart for pudding. With an egg custard. Your favorites—you’re meant to eat the meal while it’s hot,” she explained, feeling herself flush. There was probably flour spattered in her hair or across her cheeks, something undignified, unwomanly. The food was good; it shouldn’t matter how she looked. She wasn’t at home in the kitchen but it was her kitchen, in her home, and preparing a simple meal was something she was capable of. She’d told herself so all through making the dumplings, had believed it by the time it came to make the pastry for the tart. The skinned apples slipped in easily, arrayed like a fan.

“You’re meant to rest, sweetheart. Not tire yourself cooking my supper, being my servant,” Gabriel said. She knew he was tall and steady, like the oak he’d been named after, but he never seemed so tall as when he stood beside her, one hand at her waist. “You’ve been ill. You’re meant to let me care for you.”

“I’m not ill,” she said, knowing she sounded petulant. Knowing he saw how her face was drawn, her eyes too big, even as her waist was thickened. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Aye, you’re right. There’s nothing wrong with you,” Gabriel agreed. He’d agreed with whatever she said, whatever she managed to say, when she was violently sick into the chamber pot in their bedchamber every morning. He’d held back her loosened hair and laid a hand between her shoulder blades, resting it there until she was empty and panting. Later, she’d thought he treated her like one of the milch cows with colic and said as much, which made him laugh and promise to bring her a bouquet of chicory and clover. He woke whenever she did and he never complained when she couldn’t keep down the fresh cup of milk, the beaten egg, the tea steeped with mint and half honey. _Sorry, I’m so sorry sweetheart_ he murmured all hours of the day and night; she didn’t ask what he was sorry about, it was enough to lay her cheek against his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

“P’raps Mrs. Barnes would have done better,” Bathsheba admitted when they’d finished. The stew had needed more salt and less thyme and the dumplings were this side of mealy. The tart was sweet but uninspired. Gabriel had eaten it all with good appetite nonetheless.

“She is a very good cook, that’s true,” Gabriel said, standing and walking round to kneel before her. He took hold of her hands where they lay folded in her lap, his warm and strong, calloused, gentle. “But that’s all. She couldn’t balance the account-books as you do or order the supplies, she couldn’t sell a sack of seed at the market. She couldn’t make the farmhands grin and work twice as hard for her smile and she couldn’t be the mistress of my heart, my dearest,” he added. He gave her such a sweet smile then, more in his eyes than on his lips, something eased in Bathsheba.

“I should hope not!” she said. It was supposed to sound coquettish but failed. Gabriel shook his head in reassurance, stroked his thumb across her palm. “I’m tired. Will you take me up to bed?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. He did not ask to carry her and he didn’t lift her in his arms, as effortlessly as if she were made of feathers and candy-floss; he put his arm around her and was sturdy as his namesake, matching his pace to hers until he crouched to unlace her boots as she sat on their bed. She watched him, saw the breadth of his shoulders in his linen shirt and vest, the gold in his hair in the candlelight. 

“I wanted to take care of you,” she said softly. “You are so kind to me, so thoughtful.”

“I’m not kind,” he said, looking up at her. “I only love you.”

“Us,” she corrected him, resting her hand on her belly.

“You first,” he said. “For so long, it seems it always was so. It will be.” 

She didn’t argue. She was tired and he was right. When he lay down beside her, she brought his hand to rest against her heart, knowing he liked it better than any dessert she could offer him. She dreamt of a picnic amid the clover, under the boughs of a leafy oak, his mouth sweet with the taste of ripe apple.

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, weren't we all waiting for Bathsheba to be not-so-hot in the kitchen but still make Gabriel something to eat and he eats it anyway? And still compliments her. 
> 
> The title is from a poem by Thomas Hardy.


End file.
